basically there are a lot of people who are utterly convinced that "racism" is a cheat code for winning in politics. some of those people are left of center, where being racist is generally frowned upon. and so they spend lots of time trying to find plausibly deniable ways of doing racism

and it's not a left-center thing. plenty of centrists share this belief in the political efficacy of racism; it's the cancer that has eaten out the heart of Starmer's Labour Party. plenty of leftists do too, which is why they're eager to forgive neo-Nazi affiliates if they seem populist enough.

Bernie Sanders cultists contained a ton of white supremacists for Bernie. A disturbing large part of his followers who saw Bernie as a way to expand the social safety net but only for white people. And who only saw things in terms of (white ) class.

Well for some people the fundamental dividing line is class. Some socialists in the 1900s were racist and some like Debs were very much anti-racist. But they worked together to achieve their goals.

You can't effectively advocate for the working class if you're racist, though, because the working class includes a hell of a lot of people who are the targets of racism. If someone's only advocating for the white working class they're not advocating for the working class. It makes you ineffective!

Well, it's that AND "will you compromise on maintaining democracy instead of authoritarianism?"